Claim buster

Health and nutrition claims present on food labels play an important role in influencing consumers decisions about buying a particular product. The manner in which they are worded and presented can be misleading for consumers at times. So, it becomes essential to carefully read and decode food labels.
Here is a list of some common tricky claims present on the labels of frequently consumed food items.

Many low fat or non fat foods may still have a lot of calories. Often these foods have extra sugar, refined flour or starch thickeners to make them taste better. These ingredients add calories from carbohydrates which may lead to weight gain. Many of them may have ingredients such as fat replacers.

Brown bread is often coloured with caramel colour and may have a only small percentage of wheat flour. To be genuinely labelled “whole wheat bread” or “brown bread” , it must be at least 50 % whole wheat.

People often associate sugar free foods with lower calories and then consider them beneficial for diabetics and weight watchers.
Sugar free foods may be loaded with fats , refined cereals (white flour, starch) and even hidden sugars (maltitol, fructose, corn syrup, molasses) and have a high amount of calories.